AI Recreates Game Engine by Watching Gameplay Videos

Games and artificial intelligence are not exactly strangers as there have been various kinds of AIs in games for years. In the future though, we might see AI playing a role in creating the games and not just giving us opponents. This is thanks to researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology where they have made an AI that can recreate a game's engine after watching video of it.

As the AI watches video of a game, it studies the frames to construct a model of how the game works and how players will interact with it. The researchers started it on Super Mario Bros. with a speedrunner video, which would be a more difficult test for it as the player is focused just on the goal. One video was not enough to develop a model that will clone the original engine, but by providing the AI additional videos, it was able to create something accurate enough another AI could not distinguish between it and the original game.

Since working with Super Mario Bros., the researchers have moved on to experimenting with Mega Man and Sonic the Hedgehog. Ultimately we could see this turned into a tool to accelerate game development and to experiment with different kinds of gameplay.